


Trusting

by NothingSoDivine



Series: Relearning Each Other [1]
Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Denial of Feelings, I can't believe I forgot the wuzzles, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, WUZZLES!, discussions of consent, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27611501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingSoDivine/pseuds/NothingSoDivine
Summary: "I need to talk to you.""You're a fucking creep, Stein," he replied, turning away. "Fuck off."
Relationships: Spirit Albarn | Death Scythe/Franken Stein
Series: Relearning Each Other [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021801
Kudos: 47





	Trusting

"Spirit."

Spirit looked over. Stein was standing there, an unlit cigarette between his lips. Spirit gritted his teeth.

"Fuck off," he spat, striding past.

Like lightning, Stein reached out and grabbed his wrist. Even with the way Spirit prickled at Stein's presence, the touch sent a familiar rightness rushing through him — it may have been his wife who made him a Death Scythe, but like they always said, you never forget your first.

"Let go," Spirit snarled, and to his shock, Stein actually did. It was enough to make him pause.

"I need to talk to you," Stein told him, and he seemed perfectly nonchalant, but there was an undercurrent of urgency to his voice that Spirit hadn't heard before.

"You're a fucking creep, Stein," he replied, turning away. "Fuck off."

"Spirit, please." Stein took a step after him, and Spirit stopped. His back tingled, uneasy. If Stein got any closer, Spirit would impale him without hesitation. "We have to be able to work together. You know I have to be able to wield you."

"Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you spent all that time poking around in my internal organs without permission," Spirit snapped.

"That's what I need to talk to you about," Stein said, and his tone was pleading, now. "Look, can we go somewhere? I don't want to talk about this here."

"Fine," said Spirit.

* * *

They went to Spirit's apartment. It had felt so empty without his wife in it, but Stein's presence there felt very weird. Spirit distracted himself by making tea while Stein sat on the couch, fiddling with the giant screw through his head. Spirit still wasn't entirely sure what it did.

He set down a cup of tea in front of Stein automatically, and Stein picked it up but didn't sip it. Spirit took a seat in the furthest chair. Stein was between him and the door, but he'd be able to make it to the window to get away if he had to, or the bathroom.

"What," he demanded, and blew on his tea.

Stein set down his cup, twisted the screw another notch. "It's about... what I did to you," he said, uncharacteristically uncertain.

"You mean, all the operations you performed on me without asking? Is that what you're talking about?" Spirit asked sharply, and Stein actually _winced_. What the hell? Spirit hadn't seen him so insecure since he was thirteen.

"Yes, that's what I'm talking about," he confirmed, then picked up his tea, hesitated a moment, and put it back down.

Spirit waited. He had no reason to indulge Stein in friendly conversation. He'd made the creep _tea_ , that was already more than enough.

Eventually, Stein sighed. "Look, I thought you were okay with it," he admitted in a rush.

"You _what?_ "

"I thought you knew! I didn't exactly try and keep it a secret."

"Why would that have made me okay with it?" Spirit objected, stunned. "You didn't _ask!_ "

"You slept with the door open! I told you the first night that that was permission."

Spirit gaped at him. "I thought you were joking!"

"Why would I have been joking?"

" _Because anyone else in the world would have meant that as a joke!_ "

Stein sat back, chagrined. "Oh."

Spirit sat back, too. "You're such a fucking weirdo."

"Hm," said Stein.

They lapsed back into silence. Spirit sipped his tea, thinking. Had Stein really thought Spirit had given him permission to operate on him? That explained a lot. It didn't really make it okay, but it did explain it better.

"I didn't mean to do so much," Stein volunteered after a minute, and he sounded like himself again, matter-of-fact instead of uncertain. It was an odd kind of relief to Spirit. "I got carried away. I just wanted to explore every inch of you," he confessed, voice dipping for a moment, and okay, it did not sound like he was talking about dissection any more.

Spirit licked his lips. "Uh."

Stein set down his teacup, fingers perched around the rim like a spider's legs. His hands were covered in scars, a fine, pale web of marks that almost shone in the light. It seemed like every time Spirit saw his hands, some of them had faded and new ones had taken their place. He wondered yet again what they were even from. "You fascinated me," he said, and Spirit looked back up at his face. Stein's expression was one of polite, detached interest, but his eyes burned with hunger, with curiosity. Spirit had seen that look before, saw it a thousand times while they were partners, and thought he'd understood it. He was starting to reconsider that now.

That curiosity was contagious. Spirit kind of hated him for it. "Did I?"

"You still do." Stein leaned forward. "There's still so much to learn about you."

Spirit managed a chuckle. "You spent five years experimenting on me, I think you probably know more about me than anyone else," he pointed out. His mouth had gone dry.

"I know what makes you work, yes," Stein replied, dropping that hungry gaze to Spirit's chest, and Spirit's skin prickled at the intensity, "but it's not the same." He met Spirit's eyes again, and Spirit felt the faint, familiar echo of resonance. Stein's eyes had always scared him. He was never totally sure what they were saying; he only ever knew how fervently they said it, and right now Spirit felt as though they were opening him back up, peeling back his flesh so Stein could touch his heart.

"I'm not that interesting," Spirit croaked.

"You are to me," Stein breathed. It felt like they were spiraling into a dream, but Spirit had no idea whether it would be a nightmare or bliss.

"Oh," he said, and the tension snapped.

Stein sat back against the couch, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. "What's on the inside of your body is only one part of what makes you work," he explained, tapping out a cigarette and putting it between his lips. He offered the carton to Spirit, but he declined with a wave of his hand. "You know how the saying goes, right? A sound soul, a sound mind, and so on?"

"Yeah," said Spirit absently. He nudged the ashtray across the coffee table with his foot as Stein struck a match. Spirit wasn't sure why he still insisted on using matches, but he supposed it suited the ageless-mad-scientist vibe he put off.

Stein paused for a second to light his smoke. "And I got to explore your soul," he continued, shaking out the match, "what with us being partners." He dropped the match in the ashtray and took a long pull from his cigarette, then tilted his head back and released the smoke in a thin stream towards the ceiling. Spirit couldn't tear his eyes from Stein's throat. He had a set of faint white scars there forming a box around his adam's apple. Spirit wondered if he'd opened up his throat to dissect his own voice.

"But your mind is still an enigma," he continued, and Spirit finally managed to look away from his neck as he lowered his head. His eyes were obscured by his hair and his glasses, but still piercing when they caught Spirit's gaze. "And your body... well, I've only gotten to explore the inside."

Spirit squirmed in his chair. The fact that Stein had poked around in him without properly asking was a familiar discomfort, and he could deal with it. What Stein was implying was something entirely different. He had no idea how to respond — pretend he didn't understand? Explain that he wasn't interested in men? He doubted somehow that Stein would believe either of them, despite the fact that the latter was, for all intents and purposes, true. Stein leaned forward and propped his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, then picked up his tea. Spirit couldn't stop looking at his hands. He knew so well how they felt on him, as a weapon and as a teammate; he wanted to know how they felt on his bare skin.

"I think you should go," he said quietly, and Stein set down his cup and stood.

"Thank you for listening to me," he said, as Spirit rose to usher him out of the apartment.

"Yeah," Spirit replied. His voice sounded faintly echoey, like he was hearing himself from the end of a long corridor.

Stein stopped in the doorway and turned back to Spirit. He smelled like tea and smoke. Spirit wanted to taste his mouth.

"I'll see you around, Spirit," Stein said, those terrifying eyes reading Spirit's face. Spirit didn't know (or want to know) what he saw there, but whatever it was, it made him crack the faintest smile.

"Yeah," Spirit said again, and closed the door.

He made his way back to the living room in a daze. He couldn't stop thinking about the hunger in Stein's eyes. He thought about the way his stomach used to flutter whenever Stein took him up, how easily he'd fallen into trusting him. He remembered the intensity with which Stein always used to look at him, the way he'd said _You fascinated me_. He'd been so horrified for so long by what Stein had done to him, by the complete betrayal of trust, the _violation_ , that thinking about how he used to feel had made him sick. But now his whole perspective had shifted. It still made him uneasy, and Spirit still absolutely didn't trust him, but learning that Stein hadn't _intended_ to betray his trust did change things. Suddenly, thinking of the affection they used to have for one another didn't make him want to vomit. And with what Stein had said today — what he'd been implying...

Spirit flopped across the couch and sighed. No. He had to have been imagining things. Stein couldn't have meant any of what Spirit had assumed. Spirit was just confused, and lonely, and overwhelmed by having a bomb like that dropped on him out of nowhere. Stein was still a fucking creep, and Spirit had absolutely never had a crush on him. He'd never found him attractive, never admired his hands or his throat, never found himself wanting to know what his mouth tasted like. Above all, he absolutely did _not_ enjoy the way Stein's gaze pinned him down like a particularly fascinating specimen to dissect.

Spirit sighed again. Stein was still a creep, and the absolute most Spirit had gotten out of talking to him today was some reassurance that he wasn't quite as much of a creep as he'd thought. He looked over at the coffee table, at Stein's half-drunk cup of tea.

Stein's cigarette still smouldered in the ashtray. Spirit picked it up and took a drag. It tasted faintly of tea, and something unfamiliar; Spirit found himself hoping it was the taste of Stein's mouth.

Shit.

**Author's Note:**

> stein and spirit's relationship as presented in canon and taken at face value is kinda fucked up. so I wanted to explore how to make it better. mostly as a precursor to writing a slashfic bc I felt like I couldn't just write slash without the context of "this is how I interpret their established relationship".
> 
> curious about me? check out my [digital business card](https://nothingsodivine.carrd.co)!


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